Schoolyards in early childhood schools: between the exposed and the hidden, marks and traces

Abstract

This article presents a thesis about schoolyards of public early childhood schools in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Given the challenge of expanding schooling capacity and increasing the quality of service, the spaces have been comparatively analyzed, considering not only what is apparent and exposed regarding their physical characteristics, but also the traces that speak about who circulates within them and how. Our goals were: to know the physical characteristics of the schoolyards and their multiplicity of aspects, articulating them with conceptions of childhood, knowledge and the relationship between human being and nature; to know how the schoolyards are used by children and adults; and to outline aspects of closeness and separation between the state of schoolyards and Brazilian legal documents on education. The thesis’ methodological strategy was inspired in the figure of the Benjaminian collector in the epistemological sense, and it proposed to build a collection of photographs of schoolyards of public early childhood schools in municipalities in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, totaling eight municipalities and nine schools. Taking singularity as a possibility to understand totality, the photographs evidence the situation of early childhood education in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The analyses detached the schools from their contexts, taking them as collection pieces, and outlined aspects of closeness and separation between the schoolyards and legal documents.